THE LETTER.(The Talk of the Town)(Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)

The epistle that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the more or less duly elected President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, sent George W. Bush, the more or less duly elected President of the United States of America, a couple of weeks ago has achieved a certain fame. Like "Remembrance of Things Past" or the tax code, it's long, and, partly for that reason, more talked about than read. The newspapers refer to it as "the 18-page letter," although, to be fair, it occupies only six pages in the original Farsi. The text, in an Iranian-provided English translation, is widely available on the Internet. Still, in all probability not everyone has had the chance, or the inclination, to read it. Life is short, and the letter isn't.

The tone is at once polite--not a word about infidels or the Great Satan--and arrogant, with a weird overlay of crackpot earnestness. The reader often feels trapped in a college bull session with a student who, while not overly bright, has plenty of self-esteem. (Ahmadinejad's formative years were his student ones, when he was caught up in, and may have participated in, the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy and hostages.) The air of undergraduate languor is made explicit in the letter's first sentence:

For some time now, I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena--which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students.

Much of the text is given over to faux-naive rhetorical questions, some of them superficially reasonable--

Don't Latin Americans have the right to ask why their elected governments are being opposed and coup leaders supported?

Can the possibility of scientific achievements being utilized for military purposes be reason enough to oppose science and technology altogether?

Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?